Bharat Bhise HNA founder and a very good friend of mine is a life coach and he has helped me a great deal in so many aspects of my own life. One such area of my life which Bharat has really helped me with is social media and avoiding the negative effects which can happen to people who spend too much time there.
Bharat has never strictly told me that I should be spending less time on social media but through the conversations that we have had and the knowledge that he has shared with me, it is quite clear that far too many of us are wasting away too much time on social media platforms.
source:thejakartapost.com
When I discuss social media I am specifically referring to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I concede that YouTube and WhatsApp are also social media sites but the main people waste time there rather than the other issues which so often come with an over usage of social media.
If you are spending more than an hour per day on social media then these are just some of the damaging effects which you can expect, and why you should really look to curb how much time you are spending on there.
Social Pressure
source:thrillist.com
So one of the most challenging aspects of social media lives for most people is living up to what they believe to be a better life. What we mean by this is the pressure that is put on so many to have a life that is just like their friends or their favorite celebrities.
Unfortunately, social media is very much a vacuous world where very little is true, but that is something which so many cannot understand. The lives of most people are very different from how they property themselves on social media, but that mundanity of their real lives wouldn’t make for very good social media content.
The risk is that people only see this glossy, ostentatious life that people like to push forward, and this makes them wish to have a life that is the same. Unfortunately, things don’t work like this but many don’t see the reality and this puts pressure on them to look better, do cooler things, lose weight, or anything else which puts them on a par with the people who they are looking at.
Not Being Present
This may have happened to you once or twice before and it is without question the most annoying thing about people who are addicted to social media. They will be out with friends yet they won’t be present, instead of having their eyes glued to their phone as they scroll and scroll, aimlessly looking through the social media-verse.
Then they will snap a photo of the friends altogether, upload it and add some ridiculous caption like ‘#BFFs’. The thing is though, despite what they are telling fake people online, they aren’t really with their friends, and whilst they may be physically present they are not mentally or emotionally present, but why let that get in the way of great content? Those stuck to social media in this way are losing out on quality time with friends and family, which can eventually damage relationships.
Worrying Without a Cause
source:helpguide.org
Something which I noticed myself slipping into last year before I finally decided to limit my social media use, was that I began worrying about issues around the world which I had absolutely zero power to change. Social media has made the world far smaller of course and that means that we have much more information about events around the world than ever before.
Overexposure to these issues can make the world seem like an incredibly dark place and that can really affect you. I’ll give an example here when the war in Yemen began I was watching some horrific images which were being shared across social media, and it really made me sad and angry. The problem was that I was seeing this stuff so much that I couldn’t just let it go and I really let it get to me.
As sad as this situation was, there was absolutely zero that I could do about the problem, and I would have been far better putting those emotions into something which I can support and which I can help. This happens time and time again, people get wrapped up in events which don’t matter to them and which they cannot prevent.
This is not a cruel way of thinking, it is a matter of truth and if every person who got wound up at events abroad were to invest their time and emotions into something which they could help, the world may very well be a better place.
